Twitter to launch site for platform developers

Twitter, the San Francisco-based social messaging service, is working to develop and launch a dedicated site for developers working on the Twitter platform. The new site could be launched sometime in July, company officials said.

The fast-growing company has had a hot-and-cold relationship with its developer community, to put it mildly. Many early developers built products such as Twitter clients and helped the network grow, but later found themselves in competition with the company itself, which ended up buying clients, including the popular Tweetdeck. Over the past year and a half, the company has come under considerable criticism for having a fractious relationship with its community.

Whether that relationship is genuinely fractious or is just mistakenly perceived that way remains a topic of some debate. Twitter, for its part, says it is trying to offer up as much information as possible to its developer community and partners, according to Ryan Sarver, who is director of platform with the company.

The integration of Twitter into Apple’s iOS platform is going to open up many opportunities for the company, and will bring many new developers to the service. But Twitter needs to better communicate with these developers, and this new site will (the company hopes) help do that. The new site will have developer tips and tricks, a dedicated blog focused on platform and developer related topics, and will also have a robust forum where the Twitter team can engage directly with the developer community, the company said.